Handbook of the federated Malay states - Sabrizain.org

Federated Malay States. 37
upon them is so immense that there naturally arises the
question of what took place in Perak during those countless
ages. This, however, can only be determined by a very
much wider range of observations than have yet been made,
extending over the Peninsula and some of the adjacent
islands. The interval is so great that many thousands of
feet of rock may have been deposited and slowly washed
away again. However this may be, it is sufficient here to
state that no traces of any such beds have yet been discovered
in Perak, and so, from a practical point of view, their previous
existence or non-existence is a matter of no moment.
The period at which the country assumed its present
general configuration was, comparatively, quite recent. The
eruption of the granite may very probably not have taken
place at one time. There were, most hkely, several successive
eruptions, and between each the degradation of the granite
itself and of the upturned edges of the beds of sedimentary
rocks went on. Ail the present alluvial beds are of a date
subsequent to the raising of the ranges of granite hills, and
if the suggestion already put forward, that the limestone was
indurated by the molten trap rock, is correct, then the
eruption of the trap was anterior to the disturbance caused
by the upheaval of the granite. The peculiar forms of the
edges of the limestone formation, the isolated position of
small portions in places many miles from any other
trace of it, and its fissured and shattered appearance, all seem
to point to the conclusion that it was indurated prior to its
being broken through by the granite, and that the induration
was uneven.
According to this view the existing remains of the formation
are those portions which in former times were subjected to the
hardening action of the trap rock, while all the unhardened
parts have been washed away. Some of the outliers may have
been indurated by direct contact with the granite—in the hill
known as Grunong Pondok there are several granite dykes
traversing the crystalline limestone of which the hill is
composed, and at the end of the hill next to the granite
range the two rocks are in contact. This action could only
have taken place to a limited extent at the edges of the
formation, as in other situations there are thick intervening
beds of the non-calcareous members of the series, widely
separating the limestone from the granite.
The taller hills are exclusively composed of granite, as are
also some of the lower ones. The upturned Laurentian beds
appear at the bases of the granite ranges as spurs or
foot hills, the limestone in particular forming most curious